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Call to sack anti-Brexit trade envoys

Rushanara Ali, a Labour MP, is one of six envoys that Iain Duncan Smith wants to oustShutterstock/Rex

Theresa May was facing calls to sack government trade envoys who opposed Brexit from a former cabinet minister.

Six of Britain’s 20 trade envoys have defied the government in key votes over Brexit, including one who suggested that people who voted for Brexit were “little Englanders”.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory MP and former Conservative leader, told the BrexitCentral website: “It is quite absurd that at the moment the UK leaves the EU and starts to make new free-trade deals we should have as our trade representatives people who are viscerally opposed to Brexit.”

The six include Rushanara Ali, a Labour MP and trade envoy for Bangladesh, who voted against triggering Article 50 to start the Brexit process. In the Lords two Liberal Democrat peers…